Chapter 3 Solar photovoltaics By Godfrey Boyle 3.1 Introduction In Chapter 2 we saw how solar energy can be used to generate electricity by producing high-temperature heat to power an engine, which then produces mechanical work to drive an electrical generator. This chapter is concerned with a more direct method of generating electricity from solar radiation, namely photovoltaics: the conversion of solar energy directly into electricity ina solid-state device. If one were asked to design the ideal energy conversion system, it would be difficult to devise something better than the solar photovoltaic (PV) cell. In it we have a device which harnesses an energy source that is by far the most abundant of those available on the planet: as earlier chapters have emphasized, the net solar power input to the Earth is more than 8000 times humanity's current rate of use of fossil and nuclear fuels. The PV cell itself is, in its most common form, made almost entirely from silicon, the second most abundant element in the Earth's crust. It has no moving parts and can therefore in principle, if not yet in practice, operate for an indefinite period without wearing out. Furthermore its output is electricity, probably the most useful of all energy forms. This chapter starts with a brief history of photovoltaics, introduces the basic principles of the PV effect in silicon and describes various ways of reducing the cost and increasing the efficiency of crystalline silicon PV cells. It then examines non-crystalline PV cell designs using thin films, and discusses various innovative and emerging PV technologies, This is followed by a brief description of the electrical characteristics of PV cells and modules. Next the chapter discusses PV systems for remote power supply, grid-connected PV systems for buildings, and large-scale PV power plants. The costs and environmental impact of energy from PV are then examined. The chapter concludes with a look at how electricity from PV can be integrated into electrical power systems, and some thoughts on how the enormous future growth potential for PV might be realized. 3.2 A brief history of PV The term ‘photovoltaic’ is derived by combining the Greek word for light, photos, with volt, the name of the unit of potential difference (i.e. voltage) in an electrical circuit (see Chapter 1). The volt was named after the Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta, the inventor of the battery. Photovoltaics thus describes the generation of electricity from light. ‘The discovery of the photovoltaic effect is generally credited to the French physicist Edmond Becquerel (Figure 3.1) who in 1839 published a paper1% Figure 3.1 Edmond Becquerel, who discovered the photovoltaic effect Figure 3.2 Diagram from Charles Edgar Frits’ 1884 US patent application for a solar cell RENEWABLE ENERGY describing his experiments with a ‘wet cell’ battery, in the course of which he found that the battery voltage increased when its silver plates were exposed to sunlight (Becquerel, 1839). The first report of the PV effect in a solid substance was made in 1877 when two Cambridge scientists, Adams and Day, described in a paper to the Royal Society the variations they observed in the electrical properties of selenium when exposed to light (Adams and Day, 1877). Selenium is a non-metallic element similar to sulfur. In 1883 Charles Edgar Fritts, a New York electrician, constructed a selenium solar cell that was, superficially, similar to the silicon solar cells of today (Figure 3.2). It consisted of a thin wafer of selenium covered with a grid of very thin gold wires and a protective sheet of glass. But his cell was very inefficient. The efficiency ofa solar cell is defined as the proportion of the solar energy falling on its surface that is converted into electrical energy. Less than 1% of the solar energy incident on these early cells was converted to electricity. Nevertheless, the response of selenium cells is well matched to the spectrum of visible light, and they eventually came into widespread use in photographic exposure meters. ‘The underlying reasons for the inefficiency of these early devices were only to become apparent many years later, in the early decades of the 20th century, when physicists like Max Planck provided new insights into the fundamental properties of materials. It was not until the 1950s that the breakthrough occurred that set in motion the development of modern, high-efficiency solar cells. It took place at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs) in New Jersey, USA, where a number of scientists, including Darryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller and Gerald Pearson (Figure 3.3), were researching the effects of light on semiconductors These are non-metallic materials, such as germanium and silicon, whose electrical characteristics lie between those of conductors, which offer little resistance to the flow of electric current, and insulators, which block the flow of current almost completely. Hence the term semiconductor. A few years before, in 1948, three other Bell Labs researchers, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley, had produced another revolutionary device using semiconductors the transistor. Transistors are made from semiconductors (usually silicon) in extremely pure crystalline form, into which tiny quantities of carefully selected impurities, such as boron or phosphorus, have been deliberately diffused. This process, known as doping, dramatically alters the electrical behaviour of the semiconductor in a very useful manner which will be described in detail later, In 1953 the Chapin-Fuller-Pearson team, building on earlier Bell Labs research on the PV effect in silicon (Ohl, 1941), produced ‘doped’ silicon slices that were much more efficient than earlier devices in producing electricity from light. By the following year they had produced a paper on their work (Chapin et al., 1954) and had succeeded in increasing the conversion efficiency of their silicon solar cells to 6%. Bell Labs went on to demonstrate the practical use of solar cells, for example in powering rural telephone amplifiers, but at that time they were too expensive to be an economic source of power in most applications. In 1958, however, solar cells were used to power a small radio transmitter in the second US space satellite, Vanguard I. Following this first successfulCHAPTER 3 SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS Figure 3.3 Bell Laboratories’ pioneering PV researchers Pearson (left), Chapin (centre) and Fuller (right) measure the response of an early solar cell to light demonstration, the use of PV as a power sour almost universal (Figures 3.4 and 3.5) e for spacecraft has become Rapid progress in increasing the efficiency and reducing the cost of PV cells has been made over the past fow decades. Their terrestrial uses are now widespread, not only in remote locations, where they provide power for telecommunications, lighting and other electrical uses, but also in a rapidly increasing number of domestic, commercial and industrial buildings which now incorporate grid-connected PV arrays supplying a substantial proportion of their electricity needs. In addition, a number of large, multi- megawatt sized PV power plants are now connected to electricity grids in such countries as Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Canada and the USA. ‘The efficiency of the best crystalline silicon solar cells has now reached 25% in standard test conditions (see Box 3.1). The best silicon PV modules now available commercially have an efficiency of around 20% (Green et al., 2011). ” Figure 3.4 The radio ‘ransmieter in the second US space satelite, Vanguard |, launched in 1958, was powered by six very small solar PV panels